3. What is the Welsh Government doing to ensure adequate support for rural households across Mid and West Wales as they face the challenges of the cost-of-living crisis? OQ58509

I thank Cefin Campbell for the question. The Welsh Government has invested more than £1.6 billion this year on targeted cost-of-living support and universal programmes to put money back in people's pockets and to help alleviate this crisis. This includes, for example, support to those living off the gas grid to purchase LPG or bulk oil.

Thank you very much. As you know, homes across mid and west Wales are more reliant on off-grid fuel such as oil and biomass than other parts of Wales. In Carmarthenshire, 39 per cent of homes are not connected to the gas grid; 55 per cent in Powys, and 74 per cent in Ceredigion. This compares with an average of 19 per cent across Wales. Unlike gas, there has been no cap on the cost of this fuel. One constituent has contacted me to say that the price of his oil has increased. He paid some £269 for 1,000 litres of oil a year ago, but that’s increased to £939 this year. And in the disastrous mini-budget of last week, the Tories announced £100, which is a pittance that won’t do anything other than scratch the surface for these kinds of households. And although, First Minister, we welcome the additional £200 that the Welsh Government has provided, I do hope you realise that this is not adequate either in rural areas. Therefore, will you commit to looking at what additional support you can provide to support these households?

To start, I do recognise everything that the Member has said about the situation in west Wales, and how much people rely on different ways to heat their homes and who aren’t having any support from the Westminster Government. We are doing many things already. We have extended the discretionary assistance fund to give more help to people who depend on that as way to buy their fuel or energy, in the way that Cefin Campbell set out. We have a new scheme and that was opened at the end of September, with £4 million to the Fuel Bank Foundation. That’s going to provide support to people who depend on prepayment meters, but also will provide support to those buying oil in the way the Member described. And also, of course, we have provided funding to local authorities, on top of the funding that they’ve had to distribute to every household who pay council tax, funding that they can use in the appropriate way for their areas. We were very pleased to see in the scheme that Powys County Council has just announced that they are going to use that additional funding to help children and to help disabled people, but they’re also going to provide—. I have this in English here.

They'll provide £150 to all residents who live in homes that have off-grid fuel supply.

That's something that is great to see and that will help the people living in Powys in the areas that the Member represents. We're willing to consider whether there is more that we can do, but we are trying to do many things already.

First Minister, people in rural areas spend 10 per cent more of their income on fuel for their cars, so can you tell me what the Welsh Government is doing to improve transport connectivity in rural areas so people don't have to rely on fossil fuels?

There are a whole series of things that the Welsh Government has done over many years to invest in such schemes in all parts of Wales, including, of course, rural Wales. People who live in the Member's constituency will be worrying less about the things that he's raised with me today than whether they will have less to live on next year as a result of the decisions that his Government is about to make.

Jane Dodds—[Interruption.] Jane Dodds.

Diolch, Llywydd. Good afternoon, First Minister.

Thank you to Cefin Campbell for raising this issue, and thank you too for discussing Powys council.

It's now a Liberal Democrat council that is making sensible decisions on behalf of its people, unlike the previous administration, the Conservative and independent administration. Can I just focus on one aspect, please, of our rural housing stock? Many of them are very old and are subject to poor insulation, so I just wanted to focus in on insulation. The Welsh Government's Warm Homes programme is running at a very slow pace. We reckon it will take about 135 years to insulate homes across Wales in fuel poverty. So, my question to you is: what can the Welsh Government do to accelerate the Warm Homes programme across Wales so that constituents like the ones living in Mid and West Wales are actually protected against this horrendous situation that they're facing? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Of course, I recognise exactly the position that Jane Dodds sets out. It's always been a challenge for the Warm Homes programme to find effective ways in which you can insulate properties that don't have the characteristics that most properties do where you can put insulation between cavity walls and so on. We are redesigning the Warm Homes programme, we will be soon looking for the next round of bids from people who will deliver that programme on the ground, and she can be sure that the needs of people who live in rural Wales, where the methods of construction used in those homes produce particular challenges, will be well known and well highlighted to those who will put bids in to the Welsh Government to run the scheme on our behalf.